"It makes no mention of “We the people,” of forming “a more perfect union” or pursuing “the general welfare” — of equality arm in arm with liberty. It seems based on nostalgia for an inadequate version of the country’s past. Like many slogans, it doesn’t bear close examination."

Not a single one of you would know history if it came up to you, shook your hand, and introduced itself to you by its first name. When you say the word, you are invariably talking about fairy tales, and not even very interestingly constructed ones. "The Founders" you talk about have as much basis in reality as Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four (and many of the same powers).

"The challenge lies in understanding what, if anything, it actually means." That quote from the article shows how far apart WE are from THEM.They are calling it a challenge to under stand what the Constitution means, and these a$$holes consider themselves educated, and our "betters" May God help us all.Wayne B

"But the [conservative Constitutionalist] statement is a vague, highly selective catchall.... It seems based on nostalgia for an inadequate version of the country’s past. Like many slogans, it doesn’t bear close examination. Which Americans don’t want liberty, or support tyranny?"

We discuss those people here every day. We have the chance to finally get it right. The Founders' vision, but with the baggage of the previous centuries jettisoned. Slavery gone. Women able to vote and hold office. Racial minorities able to participate on an equal footing in the entrepreneurial and politicial processes. The Constitution was meant to be a chain on the beast the Founders knew government -- any government -- eventually becomes. The New York Times may be a megaphone for the forces of the left now, but what if the left wins the endgame? A free press then becomes so inconvenient. Without conservatives and libertarian enemies to roast, they'll need new targets.

The attempt at equating Liberal ideology and Constitution conservatism, with regards to the question of "who doesn't want liberty?" fails as soon as it is attempted. Their ideas of liberty and equality don't have a damned thing to do with the founder's timeless ideas. We can have all the liberty we want, as long as it is socialist.

"It makes no mention of “We the people,” of forming “a more perfect union” or pursuing “the general welfare” — of equality arm in arm with liberty. It seems based on nostalgia for an inadequate version of the country’s past. Like many slogans, it doesn’t bear close examination. Which Americans don’t want liberty, or support tyranny?"

It's as if he can't read a copy of the US Constitution or the Declaration of Independence in the plain language it's written in. It's as if his mind is paralyzed by the kind of thinking brought on by EULA for software where all contingencies must be spelled out in black letters or "there's no law on that!". His parents probably paid the price of several houses for that kind of education.

The USC and the DoI are not suicide pacts agreed to by our forefathers: they can't obligate me for such a thing. It's a framework for limiting the inevitable wish of Government to become larger and more powerful at my expense without asking me and my children and grandchildren if we would like to be slaves or bond-servants. His editor must find a way to get him to read and understand a 1950's annotated US Constitution as well as a 1900 annotated Constitution. It's obvious even to public school graduates that the current Gov't is giving -at best- lip service and pretending to be a legitimate gov't following the 18th Century origins of our Nation.

I've long suspected that the last legitimate act of the US Congress was the admission of Hawaii to the Union.

They just totally ignore that other founding document. What is it again? "The Decoration of Indian Pendants"? Never came up at all in journalism school. A political columnist I knew couldn't summon a phrase from the Declaration at all, not even "When in the course of human events," much less "alter or abolish."

We know very well exactly what the founders intended, they were very prolific putting it down in writing in scores of letters and debates. Doesn't surprise me a a sitting Justice would claim otherwise after all he has little to do when things are kept simple.

Nothing matters to the NYT, as long as they can vaguely refer to the Constitution, and just as vaguely dismiss anyone and all who attempt to use it as a frame of reference. That's the game, you see. Blah,blah,blah. You don't support the commie policies of the first black, blah,blah,blah, racist, blah, bad ideas, blah.

Grenadier1-At first I thought of building an elaborate response that spelled out in no uncertain terms what we all know to be liberty and freedom and then I figured what was the point this guys is an A1 fuktard anyway.

I keep praying that (to borrow a phrase from their monstrous world-view) it will be possible to open minds so We The People can avoid having to open heads. It looks daily ever more likely that His answer is "No."

"Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property... Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them."Thomas Paine

"As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms." -- Tench Coxe in "Remarks on the First Part of the Amendments to the Federal Constitution," under the pseudonym "A Pennsylvanian" in the Philadelphia Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789.

History, OUR HISTORY, is always relevant.

But, to those enamored with tyranny who beg the State to suckle them, our history is an inconvenient truth.

Anon 7:14 wrote: Not a single one of you would know history if it came up to you, shook your hand, and introduced itself to you by its first name. When you say the word, you are invariably talking about fairy tales, and not even very interestingly constructed ones. "The Founders" you talk about have as much basis in reality as Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four (and many of the same powers).While my family has been in North America for nearly 400 years, and by your syntax and ideology, you appear to have been from a late 19th or early 20th century eastern European immigrant family, the idea that I, and others, don't know history is nothing more than silly hubris.

That and the fact that your 100 year old progressive/fascist experiment is over. Completely and utterly, over.

"'The Founders' you talk about have as much basis in reality as Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four (and many of the same powers)."

Holy shit! A new argument. Why, they simply never existed! Why didn't I think of that?

Gentlemen, it seems we have no argument with which to counter, on account of the fact that we'd simply be discussing things which have regrettably unhappened. And all those books we've studied? Imaginary. Check the pages--bet they're blank!

We now have available to us only a history of convenience. A century of social engineering failure was a rumor. The victories in the battle for freedom were but dreams, and those philosophers that prompted them phantoms. History is henceforth filled only with examples that justify the modern state's unlimited power to dictate and do violence--even the history that occurred before the existence of the modern state.

This revelation has made me a believer of the divine nature of the unreasoned and clumsy destructiveness of the state. I am a changed man! Furthermore the place where you read this cannot exist, as Mr. Vanderboegh of Alabama does not exist, and the existence of Alabama is likewise a dubious proposition.

Sometimes I open "1984" to a random page just to see what I find. Two nights ago, it was something like: "Syme was not at the office the next day. No one mentioned him. Winston checked the bulletin board and saw a notice about the chess club, of which Syme was a member. Nothing was crossed out, but the list was shorter by a name. Syme was not on it. Syme had never existed."

You obviously have problems reading, eh, TJP? "The Founders you talk about" does not mean "the actual human beings whose names are on the Constitution," it means your wholly *mythological version* of who they were, what they might have thought about social policy 200 years later, and indeed even whether they believed that 200 years later people should be running around trying to read the minds of men long dead in order to formulate that policy. A not very difficult distinction to make, unless one is either very, very stupid or very, very disingenuous.

The very certainty you Threeper Creepers have about how simply we can know 'the intentions of the Founders' is an indication of simple-mindedness.

By the ingenious logic of Pat H., those who have been here longest should know American history best, so I imagine he defers to the historical knowledge and consequent policy judgment of the indigenous peoples who were here long before his family or mine. But that would be consistent, and consistency is probably too much to expect from someone like Pat H.

People with fully functioning brains recognize that knowing history is not a matter of how long your family has been somewhere; it's a matter of reading more widely than the blogs of a few half-literate gun nuts.

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

On the efficacy of passive resistance in the face of the collectivist beast. . .

Had the Japanese got as far as India, Gandhi's theories of "passive resistance" would have floated down the Ganges River with his bayoneted, beheaded carcass. -- Mike Vanderboegh.

In the future . . .

When the histories are written, “National Rifle Association” will be cross-referenced with “Judenrat.” -- Mike Vanderboegh to Sebastian at "Snowflakes in Hell"

"Smash the bloody mirror."

If you find yourself through the looking glass, where the verities of the world you knew and loved no longer apply, there is only one thing to do. Knock the Red Queen on her ass, turn around, and smash the bloody mirror. -- Mike Vanderboegh

From Kurt Hoffman over at Armed and Safe.

"I believe that being despised by the despicable is as good as being admired by the admirable."

From long experience myself, I can only say, "You betcha."

"Only cowards dare cringe."

The fears of man are many. He fears the shadow of death and the closed doors of the future. He is afraid for his friends and for his sons and of the specter of tomorrow. All his life's journey he walks in the lonely corridors of his controlled fears, if he is a man. For only fools will strut, and only cowards dare cringe. -- James Warner Bellah, "Spanish Man's Grave" in Reveille, Curtis Publishing, 1947.

"We fight an enemy that never sleeps."

"As our enemies work bit by bit to deconstruct, we must work bit by bit to REconstruct. Be mindful where we should be. Set goals. We fight an enemy that never sleeps. We must learn to sleep less." -- Mike H. at What McAuliffe Said

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.